Collectors’ Focus
Emma Crichton-Miller on indigenous Indonesian art
Prices for indigenous Indonesian art have increased in the last few years, boosted by more interest in Asia, particularly Indonesia itself. Where previously collectors there focused on classical work from Java, Bali and Sumatra, now the outer islands are in the spotlight
T1. Mejan chief figure, 19th century, Toba group, Batak, Sumatra, stone, ht 130cm. Sotheby’s Paris, €193,750 his coming October Sotheby’s Paris will hold its first-ever multi-owner sale dedicated to the arts of the Indonesian archipelago. The auction house has seen prices rise over the last few years: in November , a Dayak reliquary guardian figure from Borneo, c. – , sold in New York for , (estimate , – , ); in December in Paris, , was achieved for a stone Mejan chief figure from the Toba group, Batak, Sumatra Island (estimate , – , ; Fig. ), and a year later a record , for a wooden Tau Tau ancestor figure from the Toraja people of northern Sulawesi. In April this year Sotheby’s sold per cent of a single collection of Indonesian textiles, with takings three times what was expected, and many record prices made. One pua, or ceremonial cloth, among the most precious textiles of the Iban (‘Sea Dayak’) tribes of north-west Borneo, sold for a record , on an estimate of , .
Lempertz, meanwhile, which has had a strong focus on African and Oceanic art for years, sold a korwar ancestor figure from Western New Guinea for the record price of , in January (estimate
, – , ; Fig. ), while an ancestor figure with a magnificent curling moustache from the aristocratic warrior culture of Nias, off the west coast of Sumatra, fetched , (estimate , – , ) in January . Dorotheum too has seen some good results, including for an elaborate, finely carved Batak staff attachment (Tongah panaluan) from Sumatra from the th or th century; from the collection of Carlo Monzino, it sold for
, on an estimate of , – , in July . As Joris Visser, specialist at Dorotheum, comments: ‘It had great aesthetic quality, it was of a great age, and it had a great provenance.’ In February a fine North
Nias ancestor figure with a similar estimate realised , .
‘There has always been a small, steady market for Indonesian tribal art, sustained by the rarity of good material,’ says Pierre Mollfulleda, head of sales for African and Oceanic Art at Sotheby’s Paris. ‘What made a change in the last few years is that Indonesian people are increasingly interested in collecting this material. This has pushed up the prices.’ The Maastricht-based dealer Louis Nierijnck confirms that, ‘Until recently, Indonesians were only collecting classical material from the courts of Java, Bali and Sumatra, but now the art from the outer islands also interests them.’ Collectors are increasingly scattered throughout the wider Asian region, competing with those in Europe and America. At the same time, what Nierijnck refers to as ‘the largest collecting generation of humankind’ is ‘passing away’, releasing pieces on to the market and stirring up new interest.
Despite a concerted policy of restitution to its former colony – including, last year, the return of , historical objects from the Nusantara Museum in Delft (which offered to return as many as , objects) – the Netherlands is home to the largest number of private collections of Indonesian art. For nearly years from , the Dutch had colonial interests in the region, with its , islands stretching between the Indian and Pacific oceans. In the late th century Dutch, French and German missionaries and ethnographers began to collect ‘artisanal’ artefacts from remote communities. Visser suggests that at this point the colonising project required the colonisers to reject the more ritualistic objects, along with their belief systems, and choose only the ‘cleaner’, newer objects, often made to commission. It was not until the s and ’ s, with the discovery by artists in France and Germany of ‘Art nègre’, valued for its aesthetic power, and then ‘Art primitif’, cherished by Surrealists for the access it seemed to give to an older, shared human subconscious, that the powerful ancestor figures and guardians of Indonesia, like the more highly charged ritual objects of Africa and elsewhere in Oceania, began to be valued in the West.
For some decades, collectors and adventurers who travelled widely and penetrated island interiors encountered a richly syncretist culture, with myriad variations, spreading across , miles. Serge Schoffel, of Art Premier in Brussels (a participant at Parcours des Mondes in Paris this September; see pp.
– ), recounts how ‘at first Batak tribal arts were much favoured, as well as refined Timor figures’; next came Dayak works from the interior of Borneo, and ancestral works from the Toraja. Today, with the market outside Indonesia bound by Unesco conventions of and
, requiring collection provenances that predate , ‘interest is also strong for rare works from smaller islands like Leti, Atauro and Nias’, and, should they be found, from Enggano. Schoffel suggests, however – contrary to Louis Nierijnck’s observation – that with the dying out of a generation of ‘passionates’, ‘good material as well as knowledge is becoming rarer.’ He warns new collectors that good-quality fakes are increasingly prevalent.
Visser also flags a worrying new wave of archaeological material, illegally excavated, which has been surfacing on the market – objects with little financial value but whose value to historians has been lost forever along with their original context. At Dorotheum, Visser will not handle grave markers or funerary figures, because these still have a live ritual value in the indigenous communities from which they were once taken. Many ritual objects were made afresh for each ritual, or person honoured, and took their meaning from that one occasion, and would often then be discarded.
The San Francisco-based collector and dealer Thomas Murray first fell in love with Indonesian objects while travelling in the
s, inspired by journeys to the region taken by his uncles in the ’ s. Part of the appeal for him is that ‘this field is still slightly more affordable than African tribal art’. As well as ancestor figures, sought-after objects include shields, dagger handles and head-hunting swords, with textiles its own sub-category. The use of radiocarbon dating reveals some pieces to be much older than at first thought, and is facilitating the beginnings of a stylistic chronology. In the market, Murray says, ‘early counts’, and he also suggests collectors can distinguish between ‘authentic’ objects and pieces made for the curio market because the former will be weathered, and show wear. The latter are often stylistically different, too, sometimes showing the influences of Western styles such as art deco. Murray has for sale an impressive wooden ancestor guardian figure, Modang-Bahau Dayak, from Borneo, dated
– and once in a major European collection ( , ; Fig. ).
For Davide Manfredi, director of Galerie Pascassio Manfredi in Paris, ‘Indonesian tribal culture is very much about life and death.’ He also sees in the art a lightness ‘influenced by the air, the sky and the water’ not apparent in African art. He particularly admires Nias sculptures, and will make a presentation of material from that island at Parcours des Mondes. Manfredi notes that increased interest from collectors of contemporary art and Indonesian and overseas Chinese collectors has driven up prices. Of dealing in these objects, he says: ‘It is about the transmission of culture’.